Marketers are always looking for new and creative ways to reach potential and existing customers. When choosing a marketing strategy, marketers look for those that give them good results. For the longest time, email has been the medium of choice but with many people having negative views of, and feelings towards, marketing emails, marketers have had to choose other strategies. SMS is emerging as a strong contender, but the problem is a lot of marketers do not pay attention to it or even use it. In this article, we are going to explore why you should make SMS marketing an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Bulk SMS Is Immediate
Even with its reach, email marketing is often hobbled by the amount of time it takes to design emails and ensure they can be viewed as intended on all devices. Sending bulk SMS is as simple as composing the message and hitting send. In addition to saving you precious time, SMS marketing is also very effective because statistics show that 90% of SMS messages are read within the first three minutes of being received.
SMS Can Support and Integrate with Other Channels
SMSs have been shown to outperform other marketing channels due to their immediacy and ability to attract attention. Because of this, SMS marketing works even better when it is used to support and integrate with other marketing channels. These include social media, email, and print advertising. For example, a business can use SMS to remind customers to take some action or read an email both of which improve the return on investment of those other channels.
Insights and Analytics
SMS marketing now comes with features that give businesses insight into how users receive their SMS and what they do afterward. Using enterprise SMS software, businesses can embed unique promo codes, links to websites and landing pages, as well as clickable phone numbers.
By using the analytics features that come with enterprise SMS software, businesses gain insight into their customers and can track the return on investment for each campaign they do. Because SMS is permission-based, businesses know the data they capture through their analytics tools is highly specific. This data can include granular data about demographics, purchase history, interests and so much more.
It Has Better Customer Reception
Compared to email, SMS has a better reception among customers. Because SMS is permission-cased, customers are much more receptive to communication from a company when sent through SMS because they know they opted into getting the SMSs. This makes SMS marketing a very powerful tool.
SMS Can Increase Customer Engagement
SMSs are a great way to engage with customers regardless of where they are on the customer lifecycle. This level of engagement is brought about by the familiarity discussed above, with customers much more receptive to taking actions stipulated on an SMS rather than on an email because of a higher chance of getting phished on email.
Conclusion
Whether you need to send a message to a few or a million customers, SMS is fast becoming the best way to do so. Its cost, frictionless nature, positive reception, and effectiveness are just some of the reasons why many more businesses are starting to pay attention to SMS marketing.
